Well it has been a while since I have written anything out for you. It has been a while since much information has been divulged from our camp at all. On Monday we announced the release of this record I have been working on, along with tour dates, widgets (?), tweets, and other digital nebulae. I’m supposed to start blogging which is a bit of foreign territory for me. Fortunately, it seemed timely for me to share with you a bit of what has been going on of late in my little four walled world. So to begin, a bit of background on what I have been doing: I started playing solo two years ago, seeking an outlet for new songs I had been writing that didn’t seem to work within the limitations of drums and guitar. To avoid any misunderstanding, I am a true believer in limitation. When imposed properly, it has enabled some of the most powerful art ever made. I am extremely proud of what Tyson and I have done together and know that we still have much left to do. But every feeling, every idea, deserves at least the opportunity to be wrong, to be attempted, otherwise nothing would ever feel right. So I knew I needed to try something else. At the start I didn’t know quite what. I don’t intend to ever get to a point of complete satisfaction and comfort in what I am doing–that is not the ideal. But I think it is important to aim for it, to hover around it like a ring of buzzards, intent but leery of closing in. Each day I feel the ring tighten, if only very slightly. Jen Grady began playing with me from the start. Actually I have never played a show without her in this here so-called “solo” project. I consider her a dear friend and confide in her in almost everything band related or not. She used to play in Wax Fire from Olympia. Tyson and I played a few shows with them here and there. At first I just asked her to sing with me and she showed up with her cello so that was how we played for the first few shows. Soon I found a drummer and a bassist. Matt Montgomery was a friend of a friend who said she knew a good bass player. Turned out he was, in my opinion, an even better keyboard player; so soon Matt was playing keys, trying to sneak in flat nines and half diminished chords 7th chords behind my back. Jen has since moved over to bass and Omar Cuellar from Facing New York is playing drums. His band was taking some time off so I asked him if he was interested in playing with me. He’s a fantastic drummer. A heavy hitter with great touch and reserve when appropriate. That is the current band. All great people and musicians with whom I feel privileged to be playing my songs. Come see us soon in a town near you. We’re doing a short western states tour in August including a couple shows with Blitzen Trapper in the Midwest. A long fall support tour that takes us nearly everywhere is going to be announced real soon.

I’m gonna do my best to keep up regular entries, posts in the future, little missives of the goings on around here; so please check back in and stay in touch. If you have any questions, comments, complaints, please feel free to unload.